


Back to the Beginning

by jazzjo



Series: AoS Amalie-verse [2]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/F, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-01
Updated: 2014-12-01
Packaged: 2018-02-27 17:32:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,671
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2701382
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jazzjo/pseuds/jazzjo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is a story of a genius from Devon, England, and an orphan from goodness knows where. This is a story of their childhoods, of their friendship and of how everything changed when Jemma Simmons walked through that door and they met for the first time. This is a story of going back to the beginning, of going back to where everything began for the two of them. </p><p>This is a story of friendship, and maybe that friendship might blossom into more. </p><p>Companion piece to Your Hand in Mine, exploring Simmons and Skye in their interactions before the happenings in that story.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Popsicles and Petri Dishes

**Author's Note:**

> Heyo I've been hammering out a chapter a day of Your Hand in Mine, but the backstory of the Jemma and Skye friendship wouldn't leave me alone, so here it is, scenes from their friendship. I hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed writing it :)

“The human body can only access a ten billionth of the energy contained in a molecule of glucose,” A crisp voice chirped from the driveway, coming closer, “If the cell could access the nuclear energy in a molecule of glucose, a human would only need three millionths of a gram of glucose to supply the energy required for a lifetime.”

 

Mary Sue climbed atop the easy chair that gave her the clearest vantage point of the window looking out to the driveway, peering intently through it to see if she could spy what the girl looked like.

 

The doorknob creaked and turned, and Mary Sue leapt off the easy chair to run towards the door. 

 

“If the cell could do so, we couldn’t — couldn’t, even —  eat things like popsicles or jammy dodgers,” The girl’s delicate features seemed alarmed, almost horrified, as she gasped the words out, “I for one am glad that humans are ineffective, imperfect systems.”

 

Mrs. Brody beckoned Mary Sue over, gesturing for the two girls to introduce themselves to each other. When the new girl shrunk away slightly, she chuckled and did the honours on their behalf. 

 

“Chicken, this is Jemma Simmons. She’s here for a science immersion programme from England so she’ll be here six months,” Ruffling Mary Sue’s dark brown waves Mrs. Brody turned to the new girl — Jemma, Mary Sue thought, what a pretty name for such a pretty girl, “Jemma, this is Mary Sue Poots. She’s our foster daughter. You’re the same age, both eleven, so hopefully you two will become good friends while you’re here.”

 

Mr. Brody entered the house and shut the door behind him, his warm voice filling the silence soon after, “Jemma’s parents were good friends of mine while I lived there, and they were very kind to me. This is us returning the favour.”

 

As the adults turned away to settle their own business, Mary Sue bounded over to the refrigerator, opening the upper compartment’s door and stretching upwards to reach for a colourful cardboard box. 

 

“Popsicle?” She offered the receptacle to Jemma, grinning as the shorter girl’s light brown eyes sparkle as she withdrew an iced treat from the proffered box.

 

“Thank you, Mary Sue!” 

 

The two of them licked at the ice cold treats as they ran about in the backyard, chasing each other in turn which usually ended with either of them with their face all too closely acquainted with the green grass that should have been beneath their feet. By the second time Jemma tripped and fell, her lemon popsicle flew out of her hand, lying dirtied on the grass at Mary Sue’s sneakered feet. 

 

“Come on, Jem,” Mary Sue stepped over the melting mound of syrup and offered Jemma her hand, “We’ll share mine if you don’t mind it being grape instead of lemon.” 

 

They’d sat there in the grass, a melting lemon popsicle two feet away from them. Taking turns to lick a bright purple grape popsicle, Mary Sue’s hand in her own, Jemma Simmons could not quite remember a time where she had had quite so much fun that was not tied to a petri dish or test tubes. 

 

Mary Sue did not treat her like she was an extraterrestrial. She didn’t mock Jemma for the complex words that fell from her lips or the even more complex theories and concepts that Jemma spouted like it was second nature to her. 

 

She listened, trying her hardest to understand every word of what Jemma was yammering on about, be it about the ability of a human’s body cells to access the energy in a molecule of glucose, or to talk about the significance of the discovery of the structure of an atom. 

 

They sat there under the blazing summer sun as Jemma ranted on about Watson and Crick, and how they had completely deprived Rosalind Franklin of the recognition she was meant to have for her work in discovering the double helical structure of DNA. By the end of it, Jemma realised, Mary Sue was just about as angry as she was. 

 

Of course, Mary Sue’s brand of angry involved words a lot more colourful than deoxyribonucleic acid and Avogadro’s constant, but for the first time in a long, long time Jemma Simmons was enjoying talking to someone rather than facing down a page of test results and a lab bench full of samples. 

 

All through those six months they had shared a room. Mary Sue had offered Jemma her bed while she took the pull out mattress that sat on the floor, insisting that she liked it there, and that she would roll over and land on Jemma in the night if she were to take the bed. For all it was worth Jemma knew bullshite where she saw it, but the fact that Mary Sue would give up her bed for her made Jemma feel warm inside, and it was a fuzzy kind of happy that she relished. 

 

It was that fuzzy kind of happy that she had only felt once before, the one time she had made her bacteria colony grow just right on the agar in the petri dish, and she had done it the fastest in the entire lab. 

 

They would spend more than an hour each night talking about everything and anything, Mary Sue about the antics that she got up to in school each day, and the new things that she was discovering in computer class each lesson, while Jemma enthused about the fact that there were kids from all over the world in this programme, and she had met this kid from Scotland whose name was Leopold. 

 

Leopold was good company, but secretly Jemma liked Mary Sue better. 

 

One night Mr. and Mrs. Brody had given in to Mary Sue's pleading and allowed them to drag twin sleeping bags out at night. They'd lain there and watched the stars, Mary Sue pointing out funny shapes she saw in the constellations and Jemma giving those she recognised their proper names. 

 

"I love the sky," Jemma had remarked wistfully, "It makes me feel like everything has a place; a home. Like no matter how out of place you feel you can just look up and choose a sky or a cloud or a wisp of colour and say, 'that's me, I'm that thing and I have a place I belong to in the universe'."

 

"Home for the homeless," Mary Sue had muttered softly, halfway to sleep already, "I like the sound of that."

 

Mary Sue made her forget that her only friends up till this point had been her pals named Biology and Chemistry. 

 

It was why they had both cried when they sent Jemma off at the airport, Mary Sue hugging her fiercely and making her promise that she would write to her for as long as she was in this foster home. 

 

She would behave her absolute best, Mary Sue had promised, so that she would get to stay with the Brodys for as long as possible. She would make sure they had no reason to send her away so that they could keep writing to each other. 

 

“I’m going to miss you, Jem,” Mary Sue whispered into the chestnut hair of the girl in her arms, “I’m gonna miss having someone to talk to every night and listening to you go off all sciencey and having those jam cookies with you.”

 

“Remember the first day I came, Mary Sue?” Jemma’s voice was hoarse from crying by that point as she spoke, “Remember you shared your popsicle with me because I dropped mine when I fell? I found a new favourite flavour that day. I think I like grape a whole lot more than lemon now.”

 

Mary Sue kissed her on the cheek, promising to write, and promising to never forget her. 

 

Jemma did the same as she pulled her small yellow luggage behind her and entered the departure gate. They would be friends for a good long time if she had anything to say about it. 


	2. Rooftops and Promises

The acceptance letter for Berkeley had come in on her fourteenth birthday. She had just completed one PhD in Chemistry and she was headed straight for another one. Berkeley was taking her on for a PhD in Biology, and she nearly jumped out of her window in glee as she bounced about her room once she had actually pulled herself together enough to read what the letter had said. 

 

Her Aunt Maria, her mother’s sister who was unmarried and working a job that no one in their family really knew about at that point, had offered to have her stay in her apartment while she went to Berkeley. 

 

Mum had said she could not possibly follow along, since Julian was still in school in England and they could not just up and move across an entire ocean. Daddy had told her that she would be fine without them, that she was old beyond her years and a couple of years without them would be great training and good for building her character. 

 

She’d packed her bags, a duffel and a small yellow suitcase. Sucking on a grape popsicle, she’d waited at the bus stop for ten minutes before the bus came and she boarded, headed towards her future. 

 

She would never tell Mum and Daddy, but once she had gotten it into her head that she wanted to do another PhD, she had begun searching for what would come after that. There were many options — almost too many — for a child prodigy in two science disciplines who already had one PhD and would soon be getting another. 

 

Now she knew what she wanted.

 

Jemma had always known that she had too many questions in her head. At first those questions had been simple enough. A couple of searches through her trusty encyclopaedia collection would yield a good starting point for her own experimentation and research. 

 

Now it wasn’t. Now she had questions only they could answer. S.H.I.E.L.D. They were based in America and her Aunt Maria had mentioned them first, when they had talked on the phone about her moving to the States to live with her. 

 

They had the means to answer her questions, or for her to find the answers to those questions. Jemma would be stupid to not consider that, and Jemma was anything but stupid. Jemma was a genius. 

 

So she found herself standing in the airport, bags at her feet and a small smile on her face, searching the crowd for the striking blue eyes and dark hair of her Aunt Maria. Lilith Hill and her younger sister had never been all that close — they were too different for that — but Maria and Jemma, they had an understanding. 

 

They both wanted more than what those around them were prepared to work for. 

 

When they had entered Aunt Maria’s apartment, she’d immediately shown Jemma the guest room — her room, now. She explained her job, telling her that she could tell no one, that she was only telling Jemma because she planned on joining S.H.I.E.L.D. as well. 

 

She would sometimes be out of town, on missions and the like, but there were kind people next door who would watch her when Maria went on these “business trips”. 

 

Walking over to the door adjacent to their own, Maria had knocked crisply three times and the door opened to reveal a girl a couple of inches taller than Jemma. 

 

Meeting her eyes, Jemma gasped, “Mary Sue Poots, as I live and breathe!”

 

“Jemma Simmons,” Mary Sue had stared at her for a moment, eyes widened comically, “What are you doing here? After we lost touch when I got moved, I never thought I’d see you again.”

 

“Jemma’s my niece, M,” Aunt Maria cut in lightly, “She’s here while she’s going to Berkeley to own some old people’s butts at Bio. Are the Coopers home?”

 

Mary Sue had nodded mutely, inviting the pair in and seating them on the couch before she went to call her foster mother. Arrangements were made between the adults for Jemma to stay over if and when Maria was otherwise occupied, and the same went for Mary Sue on the Coopers’ weekly date night, evidently. The Coopers had a housekeeper, after all - Mrs. Yamagata - if anything she could watch both girls. 

 

While the adults chatted, Mary Sue had grasped Jemma’s hand in her own and led her up the fire escape. 

 

Once they’d reached the roof, Jemma had gazed at the sky in wonder.  

 

“Popsicle?” Mary Sue offered her a bright purple frozen treat, having unwrapped a pale yellow one for herself.

 

“Thanks, Mary Sue,” Accepting the popsicle, Jemma followed her old friend as they sat down on the cold concrete of the roof. 

 

Following Mary Sue’s lead, Jemma lay back and directed her eyes towards the stars above them, the misty puffs of their breath in the cool autumn air obscuring their view from time to time. 

 

“I’m glad you’re back, Jem,” Mary Sue reached for her hand, entwining their fingers between them, “It’s been dull without you around.”

 

Jemma stroked the other girl’s hand with the pad of her thumb, tracing the constellation of Andromeda on the back of Mary Sue’s hand as she replied, “I’m glad I’m back too. I’ve missed you.”

 

 

* * *

 

Plenty more sleepovers and girls’ nights had ensued in the two years they had had living next door to one another. They’d learned more about each other than they had about all their other friends combined within that time, and apart from their individual schooldays they were never seen one without the other. 

 

It was like they had never been apart.

 

Mary Sue was still a couple inches taller than Jemma, using that small height difference as the reasoning behind her protecting Jemma all the time. She held doors open for her, defended her against frat boys on the street who did not quite understand the meaning of no, and had shown her around while warning her of the places to avoid. 

 

Two years had changed them both, but somehow they had changed together. 

 

Mary Sue was scrappier now, more volatile from being pushed around her entire life. Jemma was less bookish, more outgoing, but had still retained much of her original sunshine personality. 

 

They balanced each other out, Maria had said. 

 

That balance was thrown off the day that the news came from Mary Sue’s social worker. Saint Agnes would be taking her back and probably shipping her off halfway across the country to whatever poor sap of a couple would be landed with her this time. 

 

She had nearly punched clean through a wall that day.

 

Instead she ran straight to the arcade down the street and beat every system they had there, earning enough coupons to redeem two matching lockets made of cheap metal spray painted with bronze paint. They had each clipped out their faces from the one photo Mary Sue still had from the six months that they had spent together as kids, from a trip out on the boardwalk when both their faces had been sticky with a shared grape popsicle. 

 

Mary Sue hung the locket with her own face around Jemma’s neck, and Jemma did the same for her. 

 

“I’m never going to take this off,” Mary Sue vehemently promised, “Not until I can find you again and buy you a new one. A better one.”

 

Jemma kissed her cheek softly, murmuring low as Mary Sue got up to get off the rooftop, “It’s perfect. I won’t ever take it off either, until we meet again.”

 

“I’m gonna miss you, Jem,” Mary Sue moved to get off the rooftop through the fire escape.

 

As Mary Sue’s head started to disappear behind the ladder of the fire escape, Jemma cracked a half smile and echoed her sentiment, “I’m going to miss you too, Mary Sue.”

 

"I'll find you, I promise I will." 


End file.
